Purgatory: John Shelby Spong has died - Legacy Thread
Anglican Brat
Shipmate
John Shelby Spong has died
He was controversial, but he was a leading light in LGBT inclusion early on. Many liberal Christians attest that his willingness to challenge Christian orthodoxy, inspired them and has helped their faith. Other more traditionalist types have criticized Spong for veering away from Christian orthodoxy particularly in his rejection of theism.
In recent years, I think the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church have moved away from Spong's theology, I don't know anyone popular in theology today, including among liberals, who reference Spong any more. From what little I know in recent years, Spong has spoken in non-Anglican/Episcopal churches such as Unitarian Churches.
He was controversial, but he was a leading light in LGBT inclusion early on. Many liberal Christians attest that his willingness to challenge Christian orthodoxy, inspired them and has helped their faith. Other more traditionalist types have criticized Spong for veering away from Christian orthodoxy particularly in his rejection of theism.
In recent years, I think the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church have moved away from Spong's theology, I don't know anyone popular in theology today, including among liberals, who reference Spong any more. From what little I know in recent years, Spong has spoken in non-Anglican/Episcopal churches such as Unitarian Churches.
Comments
To some extent, I think this analysis just lazily repeats right-wing prejudices about post-modernism, though I do wonder what Spong thought about people like Matthew Fox and Starhawk, who embraced a more subjective philosophical criterion than he did.
I recall Spong being quoted as complaining that conservative third-world churches had "gone from animism to a very primitive form of Christianity". I think such sentiments would be abhorent to those Christians who embrace neo-pagan, goddess tradtions etc.
I know that many who heard him that night - and in other places on his tour - felt the same disappointment as I did.
The problem was, I had quite enough fundamentalists to deal with. If I was going to rethink, it would have to be from a less fundamentalist position, one of exploring together.
@Baptist Trainfan experience seems to concur. I am sure that some found his works instructive, but it al ldepends where you come from.
Spong struck me as someone who not only wanted to throw out the baby with the bathwater but mistook the urge to throw out the bathwater itself for the baby.
Mind you, better that than throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.
I don't know, it sometimes seemed to me that Spong wanted to keep the church while throwing out God.
Is how a cynic might amend your observation. (Though I am not neccessarily a cynic.)
Perhaps he felt (as I sometimes do) that God has let his membership lapse through non-attendance.
Well, anyone in on the Almighty's preferences is welcome to let me know. I've experienced an awful lot of believing, nay, insisting that he's there at one service or another but precious little to indicate that it's not wishful thinking.
I am reminded at this time that I always meant to look deeper into Spong's non-theism, as I a non-theistic model seems to fit better the reality I perceive than a theistic one, to be honest.
Incidentally, Spong's view of God isn't really original, it is basically a popularization of Tillich's Ground of Being which is essentially a modern update of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. This picture of God might be appealing to some philosophers but it is not appealing to everyone. It is also contrary to the essential Christian understanding of God as love, for orthodox theologians have always insisted that to make sense of God's love, it must be necessary to posit God as active. Love is not a feeling, but an active energy to bring about the good of another, if we understand human love this way, it is incoherent to argue that divine love is anyway less powerful.
I disagree with Spong, but I have no doubt he is in heaven, probably arguing with John Stott.
Strange perchance but not that unusual. Evangelical churches (especially of a Charismatic bent) tend to be very loose in their adherence to liturgy. It's almost as if the conservatism of liturgy times the conservatism of theology tends towards a constant.
The media often gets this wrong (honourable mention to Rev for getting it right) and imagines the vicar in jeans and t-shirt with a guitar round his neck is the one with the liberal theology...
The Gospel writers would say that where two or three are gathered in his name Jesus/Christ/God is in their midst.
Mind you, I do not think that tacking on a phrase such as we do/pray this in His Name necessarily means that it really is In His Name.
Hmmm. That seems to be what some churches want to do, including those that are anti-Spong.
Fair point. God without the church is difficult; but the church without God is pointless.
Well, even remaining within theology, it's possible to be quite liberal on one issue but conservative on another.
Hans Kung was dismissive of the Virgin Birth and Jesus' miracles, but pretty hardcore about the Resurrection, regarding it as a truth that set Christianity apart from all other religions.
Mind you, I'm not overly familiar with the BCP. Does it explicitly mandate the very same beliefs that your friend rejects? (I'm guessing maybe some version of the Creed is in there.)
@stetson is not necessarily a cynic. @mousethief , on the other hand...
I sound dismissive but the world would be a better place if there were more of that around. But it's true that Spong's underlying positive beliefs struck me as rather thin gruel to support that kind of thing.
There was a thread on Spong not too long ago, and as I mentioned on that thread, I’m from the same corner of the world as Spong. I’m familiar with where he grew up, where he went to college and where he began his ministry. I’m familiar with some of the parishes he served, and with what issues of faith and society he dealt with in those parishes—civil rights and integration being high among them. I’ve known many people who knew him in those days, including my parents. I had friends who were baptized by him.
I think much of what he said and wrote can be understood as reaction to the fundamentalism he encountered, particularly in his younger days. (Indeed, I think lots of theological writing through Christian history can be understood as reaction to something else.) I don’t think he believed he had renounced Christianity. I think accurately or inaccurately, he saw himself as distilling the essence and truth of Christianity without the accompanying historical events that he thought cannot be taken literally and understandings or frameworks that he thought are outdated, so that Christianity remains credible to modern minds. In the same way, I don’t think he thought he’d thrown God out. I think he saw himself as positing a radically different understanding of who/what God is. He said “God is not a noun, that demands to be defined, God is a verb that invites us to live, to love and to be.”
I’m not saying I have any insider knowledge—just that being familiar with his background from more than just reading about it, I think his writings were grounded in an attempt to rescue Christianity from fundamentalism and literalism, as much of his life has involved reaction to fundamentalism and literalism. But I think he was planted in a particular mid- to late-Twentieth Century mindset that didn’t hold up with most people.
Snippet from one of the Eucharistic Prayers which is also in the Canadian BAS:
We give thanks to you, O God, for the goodness and love which you have made known to us in creation; in the calling of Israel to be your people; in your Word spoken through the prophets; and above all in the Word made flesh, Jesus, your Son. For in these last days you sent him to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world. In him, you have delivered us from evil, and made us worthy to stand before you. In him, you have brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.
Pretty orthodox theology, if you asked me. I suppose you could weasel out and say that it's all metaphor, but the fact that this is in the Prayerbook, constitutes this as the 'official' theology of the church. The Nicene Creed is also in the US BCP, and unlike the Canadian BAS, the rubric there is quite explicit that the Nicene Creed must be recited at every Sunday Eucharist.
I view John Shelby Spong as the liberal vcrsion of J.I. Packer. Both Spong and Packer have their fans in their specific camps in the Church, neither really should be considered a great theologian that is respected beyond their devotees, their opponents/critics probably exaggerate their influence.
Spong may be liberal, but he wasn't radical in the sense of politics. He had little/or no familiarity with liberation theology and probably would have dismissed Leonardo Boff for being too conservative.
I'm puzzled that this specifically is the group of people who you feel would find that abhorrent, because I think surely *most* people would find the intense racism of that comment to be totally unacceptable? Is the 'third world' part in the larger quote? I appreciate that how poorer and wealthier countries are described has changed, but people in the Global South didn't just stop belonging to their indigenous religions but were forcibly converted by colonizing forces, often to several different religions over several centuries. Even aside from that, terms like 'primitive' are heavily racialised and it's an incredibly paternalistic and racist view. How theist or non-theist Spong was doesn't hugely matter to me, that he is being considered some kind of progressive genius despite this racism and paternalism is really disturbing to me.
Unfortunately this type of liberal Christian, especially white men, is often under the impression that they are as progressive as it is possible to be. And always take advantage of Q&A sections to give their questions which aren't actually questions.
That the reference is to the bishops, rather than all believers in Africa, doesn't reduce the level of racism inherent in the statement. If he'd said it in the 1960s, maybe we could forgive him for being "a man of his time" and not fully realising the nature of his words ... to say that in 1998 is frankly unforgivable.
It's also very dismissive of the whole of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic renewal as irrational hysteria.
The full quote is hard to find on the internet. I was able to find a WSJ article reproduced on a Carholic site which broke it up as saying that Africans "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity" and that they "have yet to face the intellectual revolutions of Copernicus and Einstein that we've had to face".
(There is also an Anglican News article about Spong apologizing, but that one only quotes the word "superstitious".)
So, no, I can't find evidence that he actually used the words "primitive", as I had remembered(and "third world" was my term). But linking the supposedly superstitious beliefs to animism is pretty much saying the same thing.
And yes, most people would probably find the statement problematic, but since Spong had attacked animism in particular, I was wondering specifically what his relationship to neo-pagans and similar faith tendencies might be.
I think it's possible to oppose both violent homophobia, as well as neo-colonialist attitudes toward the cultures of the people who practice it, without saying that the the latter is worse than the former.
I think Black theologians or Indigenous theologians would disagree with you with the idea that skin colour doesn't affect theology, if that's what you mean. Aside from 'change' being an odd word to use here - nobody has said that skin colour changes theology - it's also quite something to suggest that racist language is OK if the recipient is homophobic. It's really not. Plenty of white-majority Anglican churches eg Sydney Anglican churches and certain Church of England churches heavily fund the kinds of homophobia you decry, but Somehow don't get called irrational or hysterical in very racialised ways. It perpetuates the deeply racist idea that Black Christians are inherently more homophobic, even though many Black LGBTQ+ Christians exist, and some of most of the powerful and prominent homophobic politicians/legislators/church leaders are white men. Homophobic laws were also often explicitly introduced by colonialist powers.
It's not offensiveness, just that first/second/third world refers to countries' status during the Cold War (hence Russia and China being second world countries) and is no longer a relevant way of categorising them - developed/developing I think is seen as actively more *offensive*, first/second/third world is more just inaccurate.
ETA: and I am more than cynical enough that they deliberately wrap their murderous beliefs in a cloth of race, to deflect criticism. This is a canard which should not be allowed to work.
Well, according to research I did earlier tonight, some people DO in fact consider the "first, second, third" categorization offensive: something about it seems to be prioritizing the higher numbers over the lower.
As I say, I have no real problem with it. I take the point about the outdated Cold War perspective, but I think we can still salvage "third world" in the same way that we've salvaged "the West", even though it dates from an era when Europe being west of Asia was considered the most salient geopolitical fact.
Why not just talk about "richer countries" and "poorer countries"? That seems to be the salient point!
The Catholics admit flat-out that's how dogmas are made.